By John BristowComments Off on A Period of Potential Transformational Change

As can be seen from historical studies of societal change and learning, complex problems usually require a change in the systems through which our way of living is organized, and a change in the paradigms that organize our perceptions, values, thinking and action (our culture). Einstein said that some problems cannot be solved within the mindset that created them.

Like others I see this as a period of necessary and potential transformation and development in our way of living in relation to nature and our biosphere, to each other and to a greater reality. Relating to and co-operating with a greater reality can be through forms of alignment and knowing that might guide us, and through forces that enable us, to take a step in our development together. This last relationship might be outside our ordinary day to day awareness; some of us are open to it but might conceive of it in very different ways. There are three key relationships here and they will all be covered in this website.

The signs of the way ahead are often seen intuitively and felt to resonate as having promise or something about them. The potential guiding ideas for our times, as seen by many, include synergy, or working together and collaborating (see www.margaretwheatley.com ). Another theme may be knowledge development. Some see the future and its uncertainties as an unfolding drama, with costs and consequenes that are not clear, in which humanity as it were “grows up from adolescence into adulthood” in the way we relate to our habitat, each other and the wider world or universe. Having more institutions that are based on human needs and values that go beyond basic ones (www.maslow.com ) seems part of this too. The theme or guiding idea of synergy can be expressed in different ways: greater awareness of interdependence, and an understanding of (self-organising) “systems”, or holistic and relational, thinking, are just two examples. Relational thinking can also be seen as a counter-balance to the over-emphasis on useful, but limited, logical sequential and analytic or reductionist, thinking in western cultures over recent centuries.